Why hasn’t Ottawa sent the DART team to Vanuatu?

A small hospital on Tanna Island sits on a hillside, at the southern end of the chain of small islands that make up the island nation of Vanuatu. Or it did … until a few days ago.

It was a functioning, 48-bed hospital, serving 30,000 people, run by a single physician — fragile, as hospitals often are in the developing world, still dependent on outside aid and personnel but held together by love and loyalty. This week, CNN showed video of what was left of the hospital after it was ripped apart by Tropical Cyclone Pam last weekend: nothing but broken glass and standing water. A child, orphaned by the cyclone, is shown in the video lying in a hospital bed — untreated, possibly dying.

The scene is particularly wrenching for the many Canadian physicians who have served at Tanna Hospital in the last 25 years through the Victoria-based NGO ViVaProject. But the devastation is everywhere in Vanuatu. Islanders are drinking salt water because potable water systems have been destroyed. UNICEF Pacific reports that all of the autumn crops have been destroyed. Usually, UNICEF uses the word “starvation” judiciously — yet applies it to all the 83 islands of the Vanuatu nation. Famine is at hand for 65,000 children. Future crops are threatened by the seawater that has tainted the soil. Rapid assessments conducted by Oxfam and the Australian military suggest at least 80 per cent of Tanna’s buildings are damaged or destroyed.

As we wrote this article on Tuesday evening, CTV reporter Scott Cunningham was tweeting that the Department of National Defence has “no plans” to deploy its DART disaster response team. Why? Does Canada really think its paltry offer of aid offer is sufficient, given that the British, Australian and New Zealand governments have deployed C-17s, Hercules aircraft and disaster teams to Vanuatu?

Where is the outrage? There is no leadership from government, and only deafening silence from the New Democrats and the Liberals.

When will our federal government show courage? When will opposition parties goad the government into doing what should have been done days ago?

Canada maintains a Disaster Assistance Reaction Force (DART) for exactly this scenario: focused losses of food, hygiene and water usually secondary to environmental disaster, with a secondary collapse of public health infrastructure and communication. DART consists of 200 personnel at CFB Kingston primed for rapid deployment anywhere in the world. CFB Trenton and C-17 heavy-strategic lift is, by design, just one hour away. DART supports four areas: engineering, communications, public health and water — four things Vanuatu desperately needs right now.

DART deployed to the Philippines under very similar conditions in late 2013. They went, stayed 40 days, did their work, left. Price: $30 million.

The “must haves” for DART are in place — there are requests from Vanuatu, and the area is “permissive” (no one is shooting at aid workers). The United States Agency for International Development, the U.K., New Zealand and Australia have taken direct and timely actions; their C-17 and C-130 aircraft are landing at the capital without problems. Canada, which shares membership in both the Commonwealth and Francophonie with Vanuatu, sits on the sidelines and offers pennies. Again — why?

When will our federal government show courage? When will opposition parties goad the government into doing what should have been done days ago?

We think that the combination of DART’s capacity and the local knowledge available uniquely through Canadian organizations such as ViVa provides a powerful tool to address the tragedy in Vanuatu. This is not the time to turn our backs on our friends.

Our Twitter hashtag #DART2VANUATU promotes this vision. #DART2VANUATU must now quickly become more than a hashtag. It must become an order from Prime Minister Harper to DND: Send DART to Vanuatu — today.

Stewart Webb is the editor of DefenceReport. He holds an MScEcon in Security Studies from Aberystwyth University and a BA in Political Science from Acadia University. @StewartWebb1 [email protected]Jeff Unger, MD, left Tanna Island just a few weeks ago, as a volunteer for VivaProject.ca. Rob James, PhD, Epidemiologist, supports VivaProject.ca